Hannibal

In the house they share, Starling and Ardelia cook dinner. Ardelia reveals that Starling's mail is being monitored. Later, Starling remembers leaving the foster home in her youth on a horse named Hannah. She is made to reenact the fish market shootout as part of the ongoing investigation, meaning that she has “no time” to speak to Crawford (286). When she finally sits down with him, they discuss her mail. Starling visits Brigham's grave in Arlington Cemetery.

Lecter joins a “tour of eleven countries in seventeen days” (290). He sits in a cramped airline seat, surrounded by crying babies and noisy children. Hoping that the FBI and passport control will only have images of his “old face” (291), he believes that he can reenter the United States. Though he has blended into the group of tourists for several days, he cannot bring himself to eat the “airline swill” (292). He opens his own exquisitely made, expensive lunch, but the boy next to him insists on trying his truffled pate de foie gras. Rather than make a scene, Lecter allows the boy to eat the food. To escape, he retreats into the collection of memories that he calls “the palace of his mind” (295). He explores his memories of Starling, including her home address.

Lecter also visits the memories of his younger sister Mischa. In the waning days of World War II, after the collapse of the Eastern Front, Lecter's parents were killed by “the artillery and machine-gun fire” (299). Aged six, Lecter was captured by a gang of starving, cannibalistic army deserters. He was kept in a barn alongside other children. One by one, the children were taken away, killed, and eaten. All Lecter ever found of his sister were “Mischa's milk teeth in the reeking stool pit” (300). The incident obliterated any belief Lecter might have in a God. He wakes up from the memory with “a short scream” (301). The noisy boy next to him on the plane comforts him, confessing that he also experiences nightmares. Lecter writes a letter to Starling.

At the FBI headquarters, Starling composes a vast collection of Lecter's tastes and where he may satisfy them. Krendler visits her and demands to know what she is “doing about Lecter” (306). She explains how she is using Lecter's “cultivated tastes” to potentially track him using credit card purchases from certain stores (307). Krendler bullies Starling, insisting that she send him any information she uncovers. Outside, she confronts him about how her career has been negatively impacted by his interference. He dismisses her with a misogynistic insult. Later, reporting to Mason, Krendler admits that Starling's approach “could work” (312). Mason, Krendler, Margot, and a psychologist named Doemling discuss Lecter and Starling. Doemling believes that Lecter's interest in Starling is “about control” (318). Mason announces that he has a new source of Lecter information.

Barney is summoned into Mason Verger's room. He is “as muscular as Margot and dressed in whites” (320). Barney has been hired to take care of Mason and to provide information regarding his experiences with Lecter and Starling. Barney explains that Starling “intrigue[s]” (321) Lecter and he “admire[s] her moxie” (323). He also embarrasses Doemling by revealing that Doemling once tried to interview Lecter; Doemling “left crying” after his brief attempt at an interview (325). Doemling suggests that, based on Barney's insights, the way to draw Lecter out is to make Starling seem “distressed” (326). After Doemling leaves, Krendler insists that he cannot control Starling's assignments at the FBI. Mason reveals that he has placed a newspaper advert that is made to seem like “a warning to Lecter from Starling” (328). Starling will not be able to prove that she did not place the ad, so they can use it to “distress her” (329).

Starling goes for a run through the park near her house. Lecter watches her from afar. As he watches her, he thinks about Mischa. He remembers how he seemed like a “frightening child” to his family's servants when he was growing up (332), but he very much loved Mischa. Lecter examines Starling's Ford Mustang, licking and smelling the steering wheel. Lecter has been hiding in the United States thanks to his “two alternate identities” (336), which have been carefully constructed and maintained across the years. He rents a house near the Chesapeake shore under one of these identities and attends concerts in New York. He likes to shop, so he furnishes the home with meticulously selected items. He buys surgical tools and a harpsichord. As he plays the harpsichord, his memories of Mischa elicit a “thin and rising scream” that he quickly brings under control (341). He attends the Mid-Atlantic Regional Gun and Knife Show, where he buys a selection of knives and hunting equipment. He notices a hunter named Donnie Barber and conspires to find out more information about Barber, who is notorious for being a poacher.

At Muskrat Farm, Barney meets Margot in the home gym. Both are interested in bodybuilding, and they challenge each other to lift increasingly heavier weights. At the FBI headquarters, Starling interviews former associates of Lecter. She notices a difference between those who met Lecter before his conviction and those who met him “while he was living in a cage” (353). She is interrupted by a call intended for Jack Crawford. A murder victim in Virginia has been “trimmed up for meat” (355). Starling goes to investigate. In the autopsy room, a deer and a man lay “side by side on their stainless-steel tables” (358). The deer and the man have both been killed and then had their organs removed. According to the coroner, the man likely killed the deer and began to dress the animal before he was interrupted by a second person, who killed him and arranged his body in The Bloody Eagle, a brutal “Norse sacrificial custom” (359). The dead man is identified as Donnie Barber, who was hunting out of season. When Starling learns that certain organs are missing, she agrees with the local sheriff that Hannibal Lecter may be involved. In the DNA lab, Starling asks for the arrows to be checked for any samples. The female employee mentions that “all the girls—the women” know about Starling (367). She wishes Starling good luck.

Mason Verger's nurse, Cordell, is a large man whose criminal history means that he cannot work in certain countries, nor anywhere that puts him “in close contact with children” (369). He enjoys working for Mason and is well paid. He brings news that Franklin—the young boy whom Mason told to poison his cat—has poisoned himself. Cordell arranges to pay the boy's foster mother to keep silent.